Week 12: Childhood snack

I cannot believe it, but we have made it to the last week of Creative Sparks. If you’ve been reading and creating along—either in real-time or on your own schedule—congratulations on making it to the end! If you’ve been able to think or create a little more because of the prompts, I also count that as a success.

Thanks for joining in on this ride with me.

This last prompt plays into nostalgia. I love a good snack. The Netflix show “Snack vs Chef” was a lot of fun to watch, but because of the time constraint, the professionals trying to recreate the snacks didn’t get to shine at their full potential. It still gave some good insight into how some of the most popular snacks are created and what makes them so special.

For example, I never gave much thought to Fruit Gushers. But since they appeared in one of the challenges, it made me think about their uniquely uniform shape (it’s called “elongated hexagonal bipyramid”) and wonder how they get the juice into it without exploding the gel shell. The competitors had similar troubles. They had molds that made half the shape but needed to scoop out the centers, assemble the two halves, and then carefully inject the juice. I’m not that into candy or sweets, but this was fascinating.

Childhood snacks play a formative part in our memories, at least for me. There were snacks that could only be obtained if I was at a friend’s house. Snacks that appeared on special occasions. Snacks that had to be stashed in a piece of check-in luggage from Taiwan. Think about your favorite or most hated snacks as a child. What was it that made you love or hate it? Are they associated with any special memories?

Examples & directions to go:

• Go to the grocery store’s snack aisle and pick up a snack you liked as a child. Photograph, illustrate, or recreate it in ceramic form.
• Write a short story where a snack plays an important role
• Dissect a snack and imagine what is needed to recreate it
• Use the childhood snack’s packaging design as inspiration for your illustration

Mood board & inspiration: